‘Tony Duvert lived most of his life in his native France, where sexual boundary-pushing in literature has been de rigeur since the Marquis de Sade’s cum-drenched epics of the 18th century. Duvert’s early novels were deemed by publishers too taboo for the public trough, and were printed in extremely limited editions, selling in the mere hundreds. But by the mid-70s, when the French literary and political establishment was in an especially liberal mood, he finally achieved widespread recognition, winning the prestigious Prix Medicis in 1973 for his fifth novel, Paysage du Fantasie. Translated into English as Strange Landscape, it has remained, unsurprisingly, out-of-print since its initial release by Grove Press in 1976. It is easily Duvert’s most difficult and troubling book, for stylistic reasons (the text is free of punctuation) as well as its often-grotesque themes—the story concerns a bizarre, nightmarish brothel where young boys are tied to chairs with pegs shoved up their asses. That sort of thing might have won prizes in France, but American critics were less impressed—one reviewer described the book as an indecency… a kind of mucous finger-painting.
‘With his prize-money, Duvert moved to Morocco, that time-tested haven for intellectual pederasts—writers such as Paul Bowles and William Burroughs had already cemented its reputation as a boy-lovers’ paradise. His next novel, based on his experiences in North Africa, was published in 1974 as Journal D’un Innocent (Diary of an Innocent). More accessible than Strange Landscape but just as disquieting, Diary of an Innocent recounts the narrator’s numerous sexual encounters with street-boys and teenage hustlers in an unnamed (presumably Moroccan) city. The theme was not especially new—as early as 1902, French literary giant Andre Gide was writing of his erotic dalliances with North African youths—but, as critic Wayne Kostenbaum notes, Duvert went “further, filthier, faster.” I always write completely naked, and I never wash first, goes a sneering Duvert maxim.
‘Duvert’s views on youth sexuality soon fell out of favor, and he gradually drifted toward total anonymity, dying broke and alone in a remote French village. By the time of his death, however, his work was beginning to be rediscovered—MIT’s influential Semiotext(e) imprint published his bitter polemic Good Sex Illustrated in 2007, followed by Diary of an Innocent in 2010. Not all of Duvert’s work is destined for exhumation; his 1978 novel When Jonathan Died, for instance, the story of a love affair between a thirty year-old man and an eight year-old boy, is not likely to be plucked from obscurity. Nevertheless, he’s found champions among literary tastemakers like Dennis Cooper and Bruce Benderson, and Diary of an Innocent has been stocked by corporate behemoths like Barnes and Noble.’ — Liam
‘That the polemical French novelist and diatribist Tony Duvert’s death in his sixties of natural causes last summer went unnoticed is an understatement. By the time Duvert’s dessicated body was finally discovered at his home by French authorities in August, the process of decomposition had been underway for at least a month. The writer’s neighbors had noticed something amiss: not a smell but a sign of negligence, the overflowing mailbox outside his house, which had not been emptied for weeks.
‘This combination of neglect and excessiveness is surprisingly apt. Not only had Duvert been living in seclusion for some twenty years in the remote Vendôme village of Thoré-la- Rochette, but on the French literary scene he had long been forgotten. Indeed, he might as well have been dead. Censored in the 1960s, as Anne Simonin notes, and published only thanks to the transgressive editorial strategy of the Editions de Minuit, Duvert’s works had seen the light of day and garnered considerable critical acclaim in the 1970s. But they had all but disappeared from the public eye in the decades thereafter. Despite having authored some dozen works of fiction, two lengthy essays, and having received France’s prestigious Prix Médicis in 1973 for his novel Paysage de fantaisie (Strange Landscape), the aggressively homosexual writer, a self-proclaimed “pedhomophile” has long been excluded from histories of contemporary literature. This is partially due to the relatively modest sales of his works and no doubt also to the author’s reclusiveness. Yet it owes more probably to the general marginalization of homosexual writing in France and most likely to Duvert’s perceived outrageousness, his showcasing of the space of “conflicting anxieties and desires” that Victoria Best points out is the image of the child in contemporary culture. Because, as Jean-Claude Guillebaud observes, pedophilia is not only defended in Duvert’s texts but is at their very heart, because Duvert therefore plays with fire, the author’s literary profile has, as a result, more or less been erased: in the 1980s his corpus became “clandestine”.
‘There have to date, for instance, been no full-fledged university-level studies of Duvert’s œuvre, which his death last year conveniently defined, essentialized, and contained. The two extant studies of Duvert’s novel Récidive (Repeat Offender), which was first published in 1967 then rewritten and 1 republished in a much shorter version nine years later , the study of the male hunter in Duvert’s 2 works the English translation Good Sex Illustrated by Bruce Benderson last year of Duvert’s 1974 indictment of sex education in France, Le Bon sexe illustré, his rageful pointing at the “strangulation of pleasure by capitalist shackles”, and Simonin’s own examination of Duvert’s works through the lens of publishing history all promise to change this: to create the critical momentum necessary to bring to Duvert’s prose the overdue—albeit posthumous—attention it warrants and thereby finally to salvage his literary legacy.’ — BG Kennelly
‘The writer Tony Duvert, 63, was discovered dead on Wednesday, August 20, at home, in the small village of Thoré-la-Rochelle (Loir-et-Cher). He had been dead for about a month. An investigation has been started, but he appears to have died of natural causes. Tony Duvert had not published any books since 1989. He had been almost forgotten, and yet, he left a mark on his time—the 1970s—by the extreme freedom that he demonstrated in both his writings and his life, by his unique tone of coarseness and grace, by the rhythm of his sentence, often without punctuation, carried along by only the movement of desire—capable, as people believed then, of changing the world.
‘Born in 1945, Tony Duvert was an outlaw, he felt himself banned—the title of one of his first books, published in 1969 by Minuit, which will remain his publisher. But the music, at once rough and refined, of his prose lent all the nocturnal strolls and excursions of a man who loved men the look of a funereal odyssey, of an almost mythical promenade by the sheer strangeness and solitude of the darkest city neighborhoods.
‘In Le Voyageur (The Traveler) (1970), with a feeling of free fall and absence to himself, Tony Duvert lets old images encircle him. In the countryside drowned by winter and rain, the ghosts of Karim (killed by his mother), Daniel (the adolescent whom the narrator teaches to write), André, Pierre, and Patrick, deprived, lost, went searching in the fog for a gentleness and a justice that the world denies them.
‘It is perhaps in order to welcome them that Tony Duvert wrote this Paysage de fantaisie (Landscape of Fantasy), awarded the Prix Médicis in 1973 [published by Grove in 1976 as Strange Landscape]. In a whorehouse-orphanage, the boarders embrace all the whims of the moment, without taboo, look, or reproach. In this book there is a kind of amoral jubilation and ferocious joy. And, in the jostling of grammar, gestures, and scenes, in the transport of the unique sentence, a challenge to every literary and ethical convention. In his almost childlike joy, this was how Duvert forgot that he was an adult, perhaps even that he was a writer.’ — Respectance
____
Further
Tony Duvert @ Wikipedia
Tony Duvert @ Semiotext(e)
Tony Duvert @ Les Editions de Minuit
‘Pedophile as Paragon? Or (Mis)Representing Motherhood in Tony Duvert’s Quand mourut Jonathan’
‘A propos de Tony Duvert’
‘Tombeau pour Tony Duvert’
‘Duvert est mort. Vive Duvert.’
‘”The trace (of the book,) left in life by an enigmatic experience,” Part 2’
Tony Duvert @ goodreads
‘L’ÎLE ATLANTIQUE, TONY DUVERT’
‘TONY DUVERT, LE CORPS DÉLIVRÉ’
‘Diary of an Innocent’ reviewed @ Frieze
____
Gallery
______
Interview, 1979
Libération: Atlantic Island is a novel in which there is a very clear divide between the adult world and the child’s world; but it lacks what was in your other novels, this romantic bridge between the two worlds. Here, they are completely separated, even at war, very violently, like a Trail Sign that has turned bloody.
Tony Duvert: There are no pedophile characters in this book. But there’s no one who makes love either. There’s no eroticism at all; there are no successful relationships between people. I eliminated the pedophile first: everyone I’ve met so far has seemed unbearable to me, who were perhaps even worse than the parents, and that’s probably because, when we talk about perversion, we’re talking about identifiable people; Just as there are fat people, thin people, hunchbacks, and people who aren’t, there are pedophiles. Now, for me, pedophilia is a culture; there must be a desire to do something with this relationship with the child. If it’s simply a matter of saying that he’s cute, fresh, pretty, and good to lick everywhere, I certainly agree with that, but that’s not enough… Certainly, one can create completely personal, savage relationships; but it’s not a question of settling for savage relationships when dealing with children. It’s essential that relationships be cultural; and it’s essential that something happens that is neither parental nor pedagogical. There must be the creation of a civilization.
When I wrote Jonathan, for example, I was already showing a pedophile who cannot establish a real relationship with a child; Jonathan has a purely passive relationship with the child; he has a kind of place where the child exists, and he can’t do more. Many people would have liked a more romantic, more active pedophile character.
The best thing that could have been done with the child, for me, was to abstain. And Atlantic Island is even more pessimistic.
L: There’s something striking about Jonathan. It’s this mother who seems to me the very prototype of the modern mother. As in Atlantic Island, there’s a certain erasure of the fathers; we have the clear impression that the true driving force of family repression is the mother.
TD: Absolutely. I’m going to say something very unpleasant: it’s not even the mother, it’s really the woman I’m targeting. Women as teachers, as people who have exclusive rights over young children, in nurseries, in preschool, and generally in all municipal schools (the vast majority of teachers are women, there are practically no men). It could be said that a child up to the age of twelve or thirteen sees only women; he lives in women. There’s a kind of matriarchy that dominates the prepubescent. And from that point of view, this book, The Atlantic Island, is a book against women. Not at all an anti-feminist book, quite the opposite: a book against the social roles of women. Social roles in relation to children, in relation to the family in general.
And I don’t want people to call the war against female cops and kapos misogyny; it has no relevance…
L: We hardly see any other women in your novels. Aside from sagging breasts and tight cottons, the smell of salami…
TD: It’s not my fault if mothers are almost always unbearable and unbearable… If there were a Nuremberg tribunal for crimes of peace, nine out of ten mothers would have to be tried there. I can’t help it.
L: You know, there are many pedophiles who “make arrangements” with mothers; I mean, there’s traditionally a common ground with mothers, the latter being more or less in love with the pedophile, and the pedophile, himself, more or less pretending to maintain ambiguity about it.
TD: The pedophile who accepts this kind of thing is forced to accept everything, he is forced to betray the child all day long. It’s an impossible solution. You always have to show your credentials. You have to prove to the mother that you’re a worthy partner for the child, you have to show that your relationship with the child is as sterile as, say, an educator’s. And it’s to the extent that you show that nothing is going to happen, that you’re going to return the child exactly as you took him, that the mother is willing.
But what can be exemplary as a relationship are the relationships I spoke about in The Diary of an Innocent. And those took place, precisely, without parents. At least, without parents in the child’s mind. The child who was free for a few hours or for a night, or for a few nights, during that time completely disregarded his family. He had two cultures: one for the pedo, and another for his parents. It’s all a bit of a mystery.
L: All “pedophilic activity,” all romantic relationships with children, take place without the parents’ knowledge, including that of the child themselves. But what’s surprising is the transformation of traditional pedophilia strategies into a kind of official declaration of war, against the mother in particular; and with such violence. Because it doesn’t go far from calling for murder…
TD: I do think the war against mothers must be waged; that we must take an interest in this very particular aspect of contemporary society where children, for the first twelve years of their lives, are raised in a vacuum with asexual individuals, a kind of worker ant. And there is a war to be waged, not against women in particular, against mothers or grandmothers, but simply a war against the exclusive cultural rights of the family, increasingly foisted on this kind of human by-product into which women are transformed. And I say that, to the extent that life in society interests me, I would like people who are going to become adults to be in contact with beings less disabled than those who have been transformed into women.
L: What this very concretely leads to is that we must take children away from women.
TD: Absolutely. In any case, we must prevent women from having exclusive rights over children, that’s for sure. It’s no longer even a question of whether there are sexual relations or not. I know a child, and if the mother is opposed to the relationship I have with him, it’s not at all about penis issues; it’s primarily because I’m taking him away from her. For power issues, yes.
In other words, they take a doll and keep it.
L: There was a very clear shift in what you wrote in Atlantic Island in particular, but already in Jonathan, towards the transformation of this fight against mothers as an abusive power into a form of generalized misogyny. This time, it’s no longer just a question of the power that women exert over children, but of the woman object herself, as she disgusts you.
TD: I completely disagree; it’s completely false. In Atlantic Island, I removed any kind of pedophile character, even a homosexual one. Whereas Jonathan depicted a romantic rivalry between a pedo and a mother. Here, I don’t show the mothers in relation to the pedophile, I show them in relation to the child. I really leave them alone. And the reactions I observed while reading this book show that my atrocious mothers, my disgusting mothers, are extremely believable. They are all the more so because personally, as a schoolboy, as a high school student, I knew them by the kilo (perhaps by the ton, I don’t know how to put it) and I don’t at all feel like I exaggerated.
L: In Jonathan, for example, the father was weak and in some ways a bit behind maternal repression. It’s also an interesting analysis of a contemporary evolution in education…
TD: The child, to the extent that he is increasingly in the hands of women, tends to become the woman’s sexual object, and we see this perfectly clearly in his bodily habits, in everything he is taught. He tends to become a kind of doll, a living doll; but this is precisely because he lacks any kind of social relationship worthy of the name.
Children keep quiet about each other. The only children who still have social relationships are those who belong to social classes where everyone works and where they’re allowed to be on the street. So they still see each other a little, but it’s already degraded…
If I eliminated the pedophile characters from The Atlantic Island, I also eliminated successful relationships between children. We don’t see any. I show that it’s a failure, that it can’t work because there’s no cultural model for these relationships to be successful.
T: In your work, from a series of novels that enchanted our youth, such as Strange Landscape or Recidivism, we gradually move towards an increasingly dark climate. It’s becoming downright misanthropic.
TD: Already, in Jonathan, the adult accepts everything, the best and the worst, because
this kid I’m portraying is still a bit annoying, not at all a nice kid for a pedophile. One of the things that pedophiles annoy me is the stereotypical child they like. He’s the child in the underwear ads in Elle and Marie-Claire. A slightly perverted first communion student…
L: You criticize the child of the family, the child of pedophiles, but what is the child you love like?
TD: I manage to construct him, finding him somewhat credible. He’s the character of Julien in Atlantic Island, a child anarchist who knows only one solution to problems he seems to understand.
He’s doing much better than us, and the solution is desertion. He goes underground.
L: He leaves on his own.
TD: He leaves on his own, yes. He’s more or less been playing around here and there. He doesn’t like it, he’s absolutely right, and then he leaves on his own. Which isn’t possible, of course. Just like Jonathan’s suicide is unthinkable, unimaginable. There are ten-year-olds who commit suicide, but we don’t see any who commit suicide out of love.
L: You were talking about the fact that women treat them like dolls, for example; you know that’s something people often say about pedophiles.
TD: Certainly, and I was saying this earlier, pedophiles have the same children as women. That’s what I don’t like, and from that point of view, I completely dissociate myself from pedophilia as I see it. I remain entirely in solidarity with the fights against it. It’s obvious that we must focus on a fight against the laws, against the institutions. But certainly not for pedophilia. The fight to be waged is so that the State and sexuality no longer have the slightest connection. So that there really is no longer a State, there is no longer an institution that has anything to do with sexuality. And, in my opinion, in this state of supposed freedom, the sexual situations we know become unthinkable. And the people we know as sexual partners or as victims, whatever their age and whatever their tastes, also become unthinkable. But I don’t want to defend the current sexuality of a pedophile, or a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or a man or a woman. In my opinion, these are by-products of a nationalization of sexuality.
A child is a billion times more artificial, serving artifices a million times simpler than those of an adult. A pedophile who truly loves children should realize he’s dealing with a puppet. He can’t free her. There’s no way; or he risks ten years in jail. And, well, that’s a risk not everyone takes. From that point of view, I’m a novelist. I want to be a novelist rather than an essayist. If I can be unequivocal, it’s omniscience, then anything becomes possible. But compared to a sort of Salvation Army of sexual freedom, it’s obvious that what I’m saying is unbearable.
L: If you think there’s no possibility of a child-adult relationship leading to anything…
TD: I’m not saying there’s no possibility. Basically, the questions you’re asking stem from the fact that you have an ideology of the couple. But I don’t. And the obvious solution to what I’m saying would be the group. It’s a group of children, with adults, without hierarchical relationships and therefore without romantic relationships either, in the mythological sense of the word. And if someone tells me that there are successful child-adult couple relationships, that’s not interesting.
We’re dealing with two realities of childhood: groups of children among themselves, as you show: these are gangs, under different names. And on the other hand, couples. A widespread couple, the mother-child couple, and rare couples who are pedophile-child couples. And this last couple becomes a positive value in itself, which is absurd. But, on the other hand, there’s a sense of closure, segregation, and internal hierarchy in the existence of the children’s group you depict…
But I carefully show that these groups are flawed. The groups I depict are completely dissociated; they’re beings who create a kind of embryonic sociability among themselves, when they have no way of doing so. They’re kids who form a group because they can’t be alone.
L: Ultimately, you prefer them alone.
TD: I prefer them solitary, yes.
L: Michel in Récidive is already a solitary person.
TD: Yes, it’s a habit of mine. Certainly, in Strange Landscape, there are groups of children, that’s already something different; they’re groups of children among whom is the narrator, the person speaking… Strange Landscape is a metaphysical novel. But since this autobiographical thing called The Diary of an Innocent, I’ve become increasingly interested in ensuring that the things I write can be heard. I mean, demarginalized. In other words, writing things that have themselves been completely marginalized by ideology, at least their mode of expression should be such that they circulate. Classics in literature have a perfect effectiveness. They are necessary, they are indispensable for extremely simple things, which I have, not to affirm, but to have discussed by others besides myself.
L: Since The Diary of an Innocent, an avant-garde side has disappeared from your way of writing.
TD: In the years when I began to write, there was an ideology of heroic and pro-heroic writing, which implied that one invents one’s own means of expression as long as one has something of one’s own to say. It’s an ideology that has a hard skin, which even produces some very interesting things. When I read writing like Guyotat’s, which tends to be more and more closed in on itself, which tends to say “I create my language entirely,” I no longer believe it for myself. I did it, yes. But my goal has changed; it has become much more political, a search for an action on others. But an action as a novelist.
L: There’s one very clear thing about the writing of L’Île atlantique; it’s stylistically very close to late 19th-century naturalist writing: the abundant indirect style, the description, the use of the simple past and the imperfect tense… There’s a pseudo-realistic style…
TD: Pseudo, indeed, because it’s caricatured, a bit forced… I don’t exactly have what you call spontaneous writing; what I do is excessively deliberate. And if I feel like writing a parody of La Princesse de Clèves next year, I’ll write a parody of La Princesse de Clèves. I couldn’t care less what people think from a literary point of view, because as far as literature is concerned, I master my instrument and I do what I want with it; exactly as a pianist has the right to play Scarlatti as well as Boulez.
L: Nevertheless, the writings you mentioned, prophetic, in which the medium was questioned, no matter what words one uses, have always been profoundly boring. Now, it turns out that you are perhaps the only one, along with Pinget in The Inquisitory, in whose work the “New Novel” style was totally natural, and precisely not at all avant-garde or prophetic. It’s a shame to lose that…
TD: Once again, if I need means that one might call traditional, it’s because I’m talking about other things. They are no longer the same kinds of individuals at all; the same kinds of characters, the same kinds of situations. And to each its own means. It is impossible to portray, as I did, small bourgeois families, petty bourgeois families, working-class families, peasant families, etc., all together in the same package, by writing as I did “Interdit de séjour,” for example. It’s not feasible. But I didn’t burn my previous books. They’re there, after all, why would we need more? There are very good novelists who have written only two or three books in their lives. This is my eleventh book, I’m starting to need a certain diversity. Why should I have to make duplicates?
L: Are you preparing a book?
TD: Yes, I’m preparing a big book I’m calling The Night Watch, which forcefully reintroduces homosexuality and pedophilia. I’m trying to show what I myself was, that is, a homosexual with a very precocious sexual life. I’m taking my toddler from when I started, at seven or eight years old. I’m going to drag him, if I have the courage, until he’s about sixteen, follow him, drag him, I don’t know what to call it. And it goes without saying that this mini-faggot is going to be a terribly unhappy individual, which I’m really looking forward to. And I want to write this book like a Guy des Cars, for an audience like his, to make them want to read the story of a gay child.
L: You seem to be very attached to this idea of popularization.
TD: It’s essential. When a guy goes to court for morality issues, we speak to him in the Guy des Cars language; that’s the language we have to fight with. That’s the language we have to make ourselves understood in. As long as we can’t translate into that language, we haven’t done anything. We’ve expressed ourselves, perhaps, but we’ve done nothing. There is still too much of an ideology of writing as literary writing. I speak of writing as communication, which consequently supposes that to be widely understood one must renounce many things. Many things that one needs, in a way for oneself. One must overcome them. It is a writing as sacrifice, not an easy writing.
___
Book
Tony Duvert Strange Landscape
Grove Press
‘An indecency, Strange Landscape is a kind of mucous finger-painting about the auto-and-homoerotic activities of a group of boys taken to a strange house (loosely identified as a “”chateau”” here in “”possibly Brittany””) where they spend the hours sodomizing and being sodomized, cheek to cheek. Their names (Claude, Lulu, etc.) are as interchangeable as their flexible parts be they aperture or appendage. Among the clean words which reappear with engorging tedium are pus, piss, and putrid. The dirty words–and Duvert is given to lallocropia–are unrepeatable. The book was awarded one of those indistinguishably meaningless prizes–the Medicis–in 1973 but there are more French literary prizes than in any resort hotel Bingo game. Except for the lack of punctuation (sauf the question mark) and the three or four empty spaces which serve no useful purpose (did not these devices date from the ’50’s?) it is hard to justify Le Monde’s claim that Duvert “”transforms our notion of novelistic time.”” He just “”shoots his load”” in the first chapter which leaves you nothing to look forward, or in the interest of geographical accuracy, bum-backward to.’ — Kirkus Reviews (1967)
Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, I love that sculpture too. Evan Holloway is an amazing artist. Oops: the Nirvana near miss. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you! Oh, I made them in different ways because I was always trying to find a way to make them work more effectively. Sometimes I had a clear idea to start, although, using only found gifs, it’s difficult to get them to cooperate with your plans, so they often changed course as I was making them. I really hope you don’t end up lactose intolerant, but vegan cheese is getting better all the time, worst comes to worst. Prayers. I don’t know that Almodovar film, but his films very rarely blow me away, to be perfectly honest. Love trying to figure out a situation where he can use the phrase ‘bristling pinecone’, G. ** lotuseatermachine, Hi! No, they don’t have plots. I’m not interested in plots even in my novels except for a bit in ‘The Sluts’. I guess I would say the gif novels evolve in a very careful, controlled way. That evolution is the narrative. Basically, I think if you just let yourself take pleasure from them, and, if you can, they reveal how they work through the pleasure. I don’t know that trope. Huh, thanks, I’ll go read up. Or, well ,your explanation is actually very clear. Interesting. Why have you not made ambient music, assuming you want to? I have directors like that too where I feel like I’m not getting something that’s apparently there based on the high opinion of them by smart people. Jarman is actually in that list, although I do like a few of his films. I hate Lars von Trier’s films, and obviously that’s not a popular opinion among the cool smart people. If you fly from Australia to Europe or the States, the thing is to do an overnight stopover partway there. That helps. When I flew to Australia I stopped in Abu Dhabi and crashed at a hotel next to airport then flew on. ** Tosh Berman, I’m not huge on ‘Lulu’, but I do think it’s much more interesting than the four or five pretty drab Lou Reed solo albums that preceded it. ** Carsten, Hi. Happy to bewilder, of course. There are big empty spaces between the gif sequences, so that’s as planned, I think. It was cold in Antarctica, but it wasn’t as shockingly cold as I had imagined. But then I was wearing massive layers of clothing the whole time. When a film is doing something close to my own interests and ideas about the subject matter, I do feel what you feel, yes, I think. My problems with, say, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Salo’ are two examples, I guess. I’ll skip those two films you watched, thank you. ** Steve, I haven’t seen ‘Lost in New York’ yet. I’ll do that, thank you. If it’s that infection I would guess basic antibiotics would solve the problem? No, I think gifs need a still, static setting to work or at least the way I like them to. ** jay, Oh, thank you so much, jay! There are a couple of my gif novels that I think are as good as my written novels — the last two: ‘Zac’s Freight Elevator’ and ‘Zac’s Drug Binge’. ‘Given’, huh. I just found the gifs floating around so I rarely knew what the sources were unless they were obvious ones. I’ve had ‘Bring Her Back’ sitting here waiting for me to watch it for days. I’d love a report. Yeah, great about ‘Suicide’ being republished. I’m so happy Dalkey Archive has woken back up. They were the best press in the world there for a long time. ‘Lily Chou-Chou’ is on Internet Archive? Good, great, done! Thank you, pal, greatness to and from your day. ** CHARLIEZACKS, Hi. Thanks. The proposed post should be okay but can you be a little more specific about the projects and presses, etc.? Thank you for wanting to, no matter what. ** Sypha, I’ve been sort of getting back into how human and expressive guitars are after mostly being into electronics for a long time. I’m having a staycation this summer too. Enjoying the tourists and their wide eyes. ** julian, Alex Reidy was probably just some guy who made a gif with his name. There’s a kind of story, but it’s more like a focused thematic that progresses through the novel and takes hopefully interesting turns and reveals details along the way. I was hoping my gif novels would inspire others to make gif novels so I could see all the possibilities and learn stuff but it never happened. They were a helluva lot of time consuming work. Thanks!! ** Måns BT, Hi! I hope you’re right about the Stockholm people. I’ll try to apologise profusely. I do like Chris Morris, yes. I did a post about him years ago, but I think it’s fallen into disarray and needs to be heavily restored. Yeah, he’s great and hilarious. Right now I’m mostly reading books that haven’t been published yet that people sent me galleys or pdfs of, so, if you’re still hungry in a couple of months, I can help. Loveliest day possible to you! ** Steeqhen, September 14, yikes, soon. Big luck. Happy almost birthday! Birthdays are such a dilemma. I’m still just angling towards my gaming system, but I haven’t re-cracked it yet. ‘Stray’ is my immediate goal. ** HaRpEr //, I’ve been waiting years for the gif novel explosion. Alas. But maybe. Pasolini is one of those artists whose revered untouchable status can be very off putting. David Bowie has become like that since he died. Is Ozzy Osbourne next? Understood about your dilemma. It’s a really tough one. I don’t think you need to fear that you’ll give into the mediocrity and settle there. Maybe I’m identifying with you too much, but I just don’t see that danger with you. ** Alice, Hi, Alice. I’m sorry about your recent struggling. I feel like I know that very problem you’re writing about well. I guess I just end up thinking ‘Fuck it’, and what else is there to do but go for broke or something. This week? My friend the writer Thomas Moore is visiting Paris, and I’m seeing him today. But, as usual, mostly just lots of figuring out our film’s release stuff as far as I can tell from the outset. ** Hugo, Haha, a deranged gay writer. There’s room for another one out here. His English GCSE is going to become the teeniest, forgotten drop in the bucket before very long, but how can he know that. I never know what to make of dreams. Toronto, interesting. Why there? Well, why not? Thank you. No mediocrity for you today either. ** Darby 🦇, What a yummy pancake! Thank you. I don’t want to make myself a pancake, but I want to eat one. A stack of them. There’s one place in Paris where I can: American Breakfast, it’s called. Might drag myself there today. I love Elias Rønnenfelt’s vocals. Much more so before he started wanting to sound like Nick Cave, but even so. Not just you, no. Not at all. Thanks for reading ‘TMS’, gosh, that’s cool. I’m working on this short thing I agreed to write for a magazine about quizzical expressions but it’s mostly about what a terrible actor Timothee Chalamet is. Sometimes I write all day, sometimes I don’t at all. I’m one of those people who don’t need to discipline myself about writing. It rises the surface pretty much whenever I want it to. Good luck with your writing and every other thing! ** horatio, Hi. They’re hugely time consuming, but, yes, they are a lot of fun to build. I know pixmix, yes, but I haven’t spent hardly any time there. I will. Thanks. I submitted to Athens yesterday, and hopes high. Hm, maybe elephant ears? Because I could hide under them? ** Constanze Brodbeck, Hey! There’s not really a storyline in the conventional sense. I think I tried to explain how they work narratively just up above. Responding on a purely emotional level is totally good. I watched the first bit yesterday before I had to go out, and I’ll continue. And with the newly linked parts too. I found what I saw enthralling. Really, really interesting. Kudos! ** Mari, Hi, Mari! Thank you for coming inside, it’s really nice to meet you. And thank you for reading my work. You’re very, very welcome to join the community here in any fashion or at any pace that you wish, if you are so inclined. Are you a writer? Take good care. ** Okay. Today I’m spotlighting the eternally controversial French writer Tony Duvert and specifically my favorite novel of his. Unfortunately, it is massively out of print and costs a fortune to buy if you can even find it, but maybe there’s pdf of it floating around out there if you’re interested. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey hey Dennis! Wow, that was a fascinating interview. I think my idealistic view is that pedophilia wouldn’t exist without a power differential between children and adults (rather than the free-love utopia he’s describing), but it’s definitely an interesting viewpoint. The writing was way better than I expected, given the subject matter I was sort of imagining a Larry Kramer-ish ode to teenager’s bodies rather than the wild bit of writing it actually is – I actually really, really liked that extract, I can see why you platformed it. I would try and find a .pdf of it to share, but I think this one could get me on some list… Yeah “Zac’s Drug Binge” is definitely my favourite of your gif novels. They really are awesome, in the traditional sense. I agree it’s as good as anything else you’ve written. If you were born in the 90s or 2000s, do you think the Cycle might’ve ended up a bit more like your gif novels, in terms of being more techy and incomprehensible?
Oh, and “Bring Her Back” was amazing, it felt (at least to me) like the best mean-spirited horror movie I’d seen for ages. It’s definitely really, really violent, but in a complicated way – all of the really nasty gore is mostly attempts from the characters to work through their emotional/spiritual maladies. It also felt like it was quite invested in kids and their issues, way more than most movies where childhood is more a state of “innocent adulthood” to project onto than the slightly stranger state of actual adolescence. It does kind of fall into the camp of “metaphor horror” a little (which seems to be a requirement for a big horror movie to be made nowadays), but the ending is so bizarre and out-of-genre that it really feels unique. I do think your opinions on it could go any way though, so I’d be curious to get your/anyone else’s take! Anyway, I hope your day goes well – Thomas Moore is so cool. See ya!
Hi!!
Thank you so much for this post! I’d never read this interview with Tony Duvert. I have a digital copy of “Diary of an Innocent,” which I now feel the need to reread.
Yeah, that makes sense – re: working with found gifs – and I guess it made the process both frustrating and exciting at times.
I like some of Almodóvar’s older movies, but “The Room Next Door” was the first I’d seen in a long while. Meh.
Where does “bristling pinecone” come from? Love planning to watch the new “Jurassic World” tonight, Od.
This might just be one of those books (that has appeared on) your Top 50 List in the past that I never actually finish. Funnily enough, I’ve actually owned TWO copies of it in my life and both times I’ve parted ways with it! The first time I tried reading it I was just very turned off by the style, and I ended up dumping it into one of those roadside book donation bins (you know, the charity ones that collect books for prisons and hospitals or whatever). Then about a decade or so later in 2018 I got a second copy and tried again, and, well, as I said on Facebook at the time: “I was making good progress on it and was almost halfway done when the book crossed a personal moral event horizon for me. When Duvert was describing male cadavers hanging from hooks in the most lurid fashion imaginable, I could deal with it. When he had a boy sticking bananas and other sundry fruits up his asshole I soldiered on. Later on when he had a boy eating another boy’s ass out, only to have the one being eaten out fart in his face, I grimaced, though kind of expected that to happen anyway (I was going to say, what is it with French experimental and/or trangressive writers and their obsession with flatulence, but then I recall quite a bit of farting in the little Beckett that I’ve read as well). But when he got to a scene of the boys being forced to torture and murder cats, THAT was when things went too far for me and I went “au revoir!”” Anyway that second copy I sold to Philip Best for half of what I paid for it, because of my ethics ha ha.
Hey Dennis. Making the kids uncomfortable with that post, huh? -) Do indeed see the English edition going for astronomical $ on book selling sites, conversely 2nd hand French copies will set you back the price of a coffee in Paris. I would suggest anyone interested in where Duvert is “coming from” – for want of a better phrase and with no pun indended!!! – may want to check Mario Mieli’s ‘Towards a Gay Communism’. Myself, I have absolutely no such nuanced take, and am very much in line with Andrea Dworkin on the “topic” in question. I know that would set you and I miles apart, but can explain if we ever meet face to face.
Unless I missed it on today’s blog (highly possible on my behalf), Wakefield Press published two works by Duvert: “District” and “Odd Jobs.” Here is the website for “District” https://wakefieldpress.com/products/district?_pos=1&_psq=Tony+D&_ss=e&_v=1.0 and for “Odd Jobs.” https://wakefieldpress.com/products/odd-jobs?_pos=2&_psq=Tony+D&_ss=e&_v=1.0
Today is the 1st time that I’ve read anything by this guy so I’m grateful for you posting up the extract. A radical and seemingly fearless writer, it would appear.
Been fixated on YouTube reviews of CDG fragrances again recently. Also reading various online writeups by people who display a rare passion for smells. I was wearing Blackpepper for 5 years but still have a bottle of 2 sitting here in my bathroom. Funny how hearing 2 being described as “citrussy” rather than what I did think of as “candyfloss” can change my perception so radically.
This writing is insane, I love it. I need to find a copy somewhere. It seems like pedophiles tend to have very obsessive personalities, which can lend itself to some pretty interesting art. Like, for example, you might’ve heard a year or two ago everyone my age was talking about this guy who went by the username “smartschoolboy9” who would dress as a little school boy and post all these heavily photoshopped digital collages of children. People think I’m joking when I call it genius outsider art, but I really think it is. Maybe people thought that the GIF novel was something you’d feel too much ownership of to want others to do, but since that’s not the case, maybe I’ll try making one, too.
Yeah I looked at the GIF novel post again on another device & realized the blank spaces were intentional. Very interesting form. Reminds me too of various kinds of picture-writing that have long fascinated me. Always important to remember that alphabets, glyphs, signs & all forms of writing are visual representations of language & not language itself. So I think I get where you’re coming from.
You’re right, it’s when the subject matter of a film is one that’s close to my heart that I resent a film for not being the one that’s playing in my head. Revolution & dropping out are both constants in my poetry, so yeah. And I can see why Elephant & Salo are problematic for you.
Are any of those Spanish film festivals worth your while? The ones I mentioned the other day?
Hey Dennis,
Had another day of nothing, except this time I’m at my parents. Tried to do some personal maintenance shit like shaving, exfoliating, etc so I can check something off today!
Ended up skipping on the rugby training, I’m watching Vanderpump Rules as background noise as I try and do something of substance… I also decided that for my birthday, I may just have a little picnic in this one park before dinner with my family, and then sometime soon have a few of my friends down to where I grew up, as a bit of a fun experience, almost like a school reunion if we end up going to any of the bars here.
Is ‘Stray’ that cat game where you wander around a city? If so, that’s been on my to-play list for a long time! I’ve fallen into a bit of an obsession with the farming sim genre, mostly because of Harvest Moon and researching the whole entire franchise. Now I’m thinking I should finally invest some time into Stardew Valley, but perhaps I should break up this obsession with something completely different.
Hey Dennis.
Every day this blog makes me realise how much I need to catch up with and check out, too many interesting things that pass me by. I think I’ve seen Duvert’s books in French a couple of times. Maybe if I feel up to it, I might track down a copy and try my best to read it there instead of going broke for an English edition. But French is hard for me when it comes to longer pieces of prose.
I do try to make my friend worry less, but he has the same kind of neurotic personality I had back as a teenager, where everything was really, really important and the end of the world. I suppose it’s natural, but I wish he were a bit happier in his skin. He’s trans, so I suppose it’s a bit difficult with everything in the UK right now. But I think he’s so sweet and kind, and I wish he could just see how much he means to people I suppose. I think people tend to be overly psychoanalytical with kids like him, but he really just wants to be understood and liked for who he is. I dunno, I feel odd when people try to get a clear “psychological” picture of why people are the way they are, makes me think of my school counselor asking me why I wanted to kill myself one time, and all I could say was “I just kinda don’t like it here,” and her saying “well that’s not good enough is it?” or “that’s not *really*, it is it?”
Anyway, I really do like him and want him to make whatever will make him happy.
He told me once that he had a delusion about a “secret brother” with a dented skull living inside his head and walking in his dreams, being the part of his brain he feels he can’t ever use. That really stuck with me. I guess I just can’t stand to see him hurt or alone or thinking he’s too fucked up to help. I suppose we try to be brothers in tumors to each other.
As for Toronto…the only real reason is that some of my best friends are there, and because I’m technically a Canadian citizen, it should be easy just to go whenever. I’ve never heard much said about Toronto as a city (people I know who live there think it’s bland) but the one time I went, I found it nice. But I was 14, so maybe that doesn’t count. It takes a lot to make me actively dislike a place though.
My Tuesday has not been mediocre, thank you. BTW, can you tell me anything about the script you and Zac are working on? Or is that confidential? Regardless, I wish you the best. Thanks.
(Do tell if I talk for too long, btw. I wish I were more succinct.)
I hope a prescription would clear this up, but after getting the results of yesterday’s bloodwork, he’s referred me to a hematologist. I’m waiting to hear back from that doctor about an appointment once he’s been able to see the test results. I do not feel very well today – I was gonna go to a press screening of Ethan Coen’s new film, but I couldn’t make it out. Despite this, I’ve edited the latest “Radio Not Radio” show and will send it to Red Berry Radio tonight.
My parents’ ashes are ready to be shipped to me as soon as I pay $65 for the postage. It’s so strange to contemplate this. My mom was still alive a little over 3 months ago.
For years, I’ve been looking for a compilation of BRASS EYE outtakes that Chris Morris has occasionally shown at in-person events. You’d expect it to leak online by now, but he has it locked up tightly.
Hello!
What a fascinating read this was! Since having started the journey of reading your work I feel like I have really expanded on what I read, most recently (after reading an interview of yours) I picked up Killing For Company. I am lucky to have access to a library system with so many options and I noticed that I can check out Diary of an Innocent.
I feel I am a reader more than I am a writer. I have tried on many occasions to write because I always have weird idea in my head, but it never translates well. You might have answered this before but: do you ever revisit your work? Do you ever think of how you would approach a topic differently now?
Have a great day, Dennis! ヽ(´▽`)/
I’m not worried about becoming mediocre. I’m just having these nightmares that against my will I’ll be forced to. I’m having weirdly intense daydreams about basically every embarrassing thing I’ve ever done and people I don’t know anymore. The latter part not in a sentimental way, more in a ‘how the hell did I get here?’ sort of way.
This book has been on my radar for a while, and yes, very out of print, but thanks for bringing it to the forefront of our consciousness nevertheless. I think there is some Duvert in print in English scattered around here and there. Oh yeah, Semiotext(e) have ‘Atlantic Island’ out through Native Agents.
But yes, I’ll add to the celebration of Dalkey Archive becoming active again, and the Leve book is long awaited for me so that’s so exciting. ‘The Tunnel’ by William Gass is returning to print as well, which is also great.
Is Ozzy next for the untouchables? Well, from what I’ve seen in the UK I can say that certain people really revere him as a working class hero, being someone who generally seemed pretty down to earth in how he shared a lot of his life with the world. His brain was fried, sure, but his eccentricities made people love him. But by his artistic merits I don’t think he’s reaching Bowie status, no, because I think a lot of people just know him as a tabloid figure.
Hi
Is this the book that you gave to your friend and now you don’t have it anymore? I remember us discussing this. Do you miss your copy still?
Atlantic island is the one of his books I am more curious to read it appeals to me and I hope that I will like it
The writing in this book excerpt was great. It got me curious how it would be with punctuation although I feel if it had punctuation it would be different anyway. So it works in that way as it is
I don’t know, many stuff to think about reading this post
I think Atlantic island became a TV movie or something way later I am having some images from it in my mind from an older post here or something
When you watch Lily Chou-chou I am curious to read your thoughts and hope you will share with us
Thank you for the good wishes about the boy troubles. Until the storyline resolves and that is if it does I am staying silent
and moving on
and getting a buzzcut soon for different energy
Love from you know where
Woah, I can see why this guy is controversial… I’m with Jay here, in the sense that I think hierarchy/institutions are often what enable child abuse. It’s what I’ve observed to be true in my own life, one of the schools I attended as a kid got sued for covering up for a teacher who abused students for… I don’t know, a decade at least before he went to prison. The interview is really fascinating, it kind of reminds me of current anarchist discussion surrounding youth liberation- how people attempt to hijack the cause for their own (predatory) interests. I think Duvert tells on himself here (a few times, but especially) when he acknowledges the struggle between him and the mother is one over “power”. I think his choice to not to use punctuation is interesting, and kind of accentuates something I’ve noticed from a lot of the books I’ve read that were translated from french… the run-on sentence type quality many of them possess.
It’s so cool that you know about pixmix, I’ve considered using it to make collages inspired by your work before, but as of now I’ve only made pinterest boards. I had to remake mine since a few months back pinterest starting banning people left and right due to AI moderators. It wasn’t too much of a set back though cause I think image curation is relaxing & pretty fun, I’m glad you feel the same about your gif novels.
YAYYY about AIFVF! And elephant ears are such a good choice- such intelligent & beautiful creatures. Connie & I have been making animal ear crafts lately, which is part of what inspired me to ask :^)
I hope you have a wonderful day, Dennis!
hi dennis!
i’ve wanted to read tony duvert for a while but haven’t known where to start. i was thinking of maybe starting with ‘odd jobs’ cuz it’s short and also cuz juan valencia (from the youtube channel ‘plagued by visions’) recommended it. i keep getting paranoid that i’ll get arrested for importing one of duvert’s books (or anything similiar to that) cuz of recent book bans in australia for “child grooming content” (the same moral panic in america is here in australia too). to my knowledge none of the bans have been on a federal level, they’ve all just been at council libraries or maybe the state level at worst. i’ll probably be fine and not get arrested or anything (i’ve ordered kiddiepunk and amphetamine sulphate books without any issues) but it has somewhat put me off ordering duvert’s books.
also i found a pdf of ‘strange landscape’ on the internet archive if you or others were interested: https://archive.org/details/strange_landscape_202408/strange_landscape/mode/2up
understood about the gif novels. they certainly work for me on an emotional/visceral level. it makes me want to maybe try making one myself sometime. i sort of use gifs in that way on discord sex servers, albeit mine are primarily for sexual reasons (i have a huge collection of them as a result).
the reason i haven’t made ambient music (or much music in general), is because music is very difficult for me to create. i don’t have any formal training and i’m unable to think ‘musically’. i basically just make/arrange sounds (usually sampled sounds) in infinitely different ways until i find something i like (or more commonly give up in frustration). it’s similar to how i write. i can’t imagine/picture what i want to write very well (if at all) so writing for me is very much trial and error (writing stuff until i find something i like). the difference is that writing (at least on the computer) is immediately there and you can quickly read/edit/delete whenever you want. with music, it’s a lot more time consuming with having to listen and re-listen, adding effects etc. constantly. i still have a bunch of unfinished music projects over the years that i might finish one day but it’s not gonna happen any time soon. writing is easier for me (but still very difficult).
with jarman (and other directors who’s films i for whatever reason don’t gel with), i find him and his films more interesting to talk about or analyse than to necessarily watch. his life or the context in which he made films in is more interesting to me personally. another example would be fred halsted. i don’t find his films very enjoyable but i found his life and philosophy really interesting (particularly in the william e. jones book ‘halsted plays himself’).
i’m scared if i ever did a stopover partway to the states (or somewhere else) that i’d sleep through and miss the next flight, but i suppose that has to do with how long of a stopover it is and how close the hotel is to the airport.